Call it Mr. Donovan goes to East Berlin. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks team up for a handsome piece of very pointed nostalgia (with help from the Coen Brothers and Matt Charman, who handled the script, and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, lens set to "stately."). Hanks is private citizen and shrewd attorney James Donovan, a doughy guy with a spine of grade-A Bethlehem steel and a mind that cherishes pragmatism without yielding principle. He is America's best self, ready to be deployed against her enemies — both within and without. Sure, the Russians are bad: it's 1957, and kids are getting traumatized in school by cartoons about what to do in case of nuclear attack. Plus, they've riddled the country with spies, one of whom needs defending in a court of law if America's gonna look like the good guy. (Hello, Mr. Donovan!) But there are other sorts of baddies as well: CIA spooks with no regard for privacy, judges with little use for due process, yahoos who prefer violence to justice. (That's the pointy part.) Donovan handles them all with aplomb, and is rewarded with a trip behind the Iron Curtain to negotiate an extremely delicate prisoner exchange. (It seems we're not above a little spying ourselves.) Feel-good heroism at its finest, with plenty of gentle yuks to ease the tension. (2015) — Matthew Lickona
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